


Future Rust, Future Dust

by SoWrongButSoWrite (CinnaStarks)



Series: Inquisitor Izuna [14]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Lyrium Withdrawal, Pain, Paranormal, ghost au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 02:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3711991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CinnaStarks/pseuds/SoWrongButSoWrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Cullen thinks the elf watching him is a hallucination brought on by his withdrawal. She's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Future Rust, Future Dust

She’s just a hallucination.

Cullen tells himself when he sees her legs dangling through the hole in his tower’s ceiling. When he sleeps, he sleeps with his head dug into the pillow. When he works, he keeps his head bowed. Two glowing legs are easy to ignore and, as far as strange things go, Cullen has seen much worse.

Then he has his first debilitating episode since Haven. Pain rushes through his body like a lightning spell. Every muscle spasms and every bone feels as if it might break with the slightest voluntary movement.

And she is standing beside his bed. This elven woman wearing armor he doesn’t recognize from the Chantry’s history books watches him with sullen, grey eyes. Through the red that fills Cullen’s vision, he can see the pain in her expression. _No._ He says internally. _This is just your imagination. Do not pretend that she is anything more._

After that night, she moves from the roof to one of his loft’s windowsills. He starts sleeping on his side.

A second episode happens and it is far worse than the first. Lightning becomes a storm. Spasms become seizures. She watches him again. He allows himself to watch her only long enough to make out the reddish streaks that mar her features and tint the whites of her eyes. Tears. There are tears.

The third episode is the same intensity as the second. He notices her white knuckle grip on the curved staff she holds with one hand. For a moment, she reaches out as if to touch him. His muscles seize up again. She recoils and runs off.

He wakes to see her sitting at the foot of his bed.

“Are you a hallucination?” Words brought on by desperation and pain fall from his lips without reprimand.

The elf lets out a small, throaty laugh. “No, I am definitely not.”

“A ghost, then?”

“No better term for a dead person without a body or purpose, I suppose.” She shrugs. “Though I would prefer to be called Izuna, since it is my actual name.”

“Izuna.” Part of Cullen cannot believe he is smiling at a ghost. No worse than laughing at a Spirit of Compassion, he supposes, but still strange. “If you don’t mind me asking, Izuna, when did you die?”

Cheer falls into sorrow. Izuna’s eyes grow downcast as they move to the sunlight streaming in through the roof. “Without purpose, remember? I have been alone for so long that I barely remember my name, let alone the Age in which I died.” Crooked teeth find thin, red lips. “I’m not looking for pity, tho-“

Cullen is about to answer when he hears a knock at one of his doors.

She is gone until the sky is dark again.

“Still here.” Izuna sighs. “Still dead.”

“Still here.” He mimics her exasperation. “Still curious.”

They speak until the sky is bright again.

Izuna remembers some things about her past. She was an Arcane Warrior, a present day Knight Enchanter, who befriended a healer. That friendship became a relationship which, according to her, “ended in something I cannot communicate.”

“Love?”

That same, beautiful laugh echoes across his consciousness. Tanned fingers tug at her braids, brushing back stray hairs. She would have fit right in at the tavern or in the library, Cullen is sure of it. “Love, yes.” Izuna says. “I’ve seen it here, with your Inquisition.”

“Oh, really?”

“Have you seen the way that Tevinter mage looks at the Inquisitor?” Her smile is almost dreamlike in its relaxation. “Forgive me, but-“ Her gaze travels to a far off place Cullen cannot see. “-I want that.”

“Don’t we all?”

Months after that sleepless night, his pain erupts again.

The fourth episode brings Cullen to what he wants to believe is the brink of death itself. The pain is indescribable, unimaginable. It floods his veins like liquid fire. It plays with his spine until there is only darkness to be seen.

He wakes to her eyes boring into his already throbbing skull.

Only one question can form upon his lips.

“What did it feel like?”

“Nothing.” Izuna spits fire into his limp soul. “The man who had vowed to protect me, to look after me, pushed me off the roof of this very tower. I hit the ground. There was darkness. Now I am here.”

There is silence.

“You have business to attend to, Commander.” Her words still stick, despite her lips’ intangibility. “A lovesick ghost should not stand in your way.”

“No.” Cullen wants to wrap his arms around her and promise that he will fix whatever is keeping her at Skyhold. No, he needs that. Not having that makes his body ache in places that withdrawal cannot touch. Not being able to touch her hurts. “Izuna, I care about you.”

What sounds like a sharp gasp hits him in the chest and then, before he can begin to ask what is wrong, Izuna is gone.

She never returns. Days become weeks. Weeks become months.

Walking becomes a chore.

A dwarf defeats Corypheus.

His bed is moved down from its loft, the ladder having become too much work to climb. Still, he works. He pushes to smooth any rough edges left after the Breach was closed, to tie any loose strings even when Cassandra begs him to slow down. No, he cannot. He will not. Anything less than excruciating pain just brings back the thought of her. She was just a hallucination. Cullen knows this. Just a pain-driven hallucination.

It has been a year since Izuna left his world when his fifth and final episode takes him in his sleep.

There is no pain, only warmth.

Grey eyes meet hazel.

“I care about you, too.”


End file.
